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A Facebook friend of mine was remarking that he had to don a winter coat as he sat on the beach on South Bass Island Tuesday night. What happened to summer?

Well, as anyone who frequents Lake Erie knows, the weather can change dramatically once you get above U.S. 20. But the cool Canadian air mass that has moved into our area Wednesday is an unusually early reminder that this summer won’t be with us forever. Typically, air masses like this begin arriving here in mid- or late August.

As the high pressure center moves closer to us, the morning’s deck of stratocumulus clouds should gradually break up with the drier air. The cool breeze will likely remain as afternoon temperatures top out around just 72 degrees, 10 degrees below normal.

It wouldn’t be at all unusual for some of the county’s ordinarily colder locations to see temperatures drop into the upper 40s overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning, which would definitely be unusual for July, though not unheard of in some parts of Richland County.

The cool, dry weather, however, with extremely comfortable humidity levels, will be the rule for the remainder of this work week, so enjoy. Although Mansfield’s Lahm Airport received no rain Tuesday, many areas around here measured quite a bit – again. If you haven’t been able to get out and mow the grass or weed the garden because of the persistent dampness, here’s your chance.

At any rate, don’t wait until Saturday afternoon, when it is expected to rain again, probably into Saturday night. Our temperature profile is forecast to remain below normal, with highs in the 70s and cool overnight lows, into at least the first few days of August.

In solar system news, NASA’s Cassini probe, which has been hanging around Saturn for the past 15 years taking photographs, recently managed to get Earth into the frame for one shot.

In the photo, above, Earth can be seen as a blue dot, barely visible at 898 million miles away. This marks just the third time that our planet has been photographed from the outer solar system.

Below are the weather statistics for Tuesday, July 23, at my location 4 miles north-northwest of Fredericktown, Ohio: